This is the website for Bruce O’Brien’s HIST 121: Western Civilization I. The course is an introduction to the history of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East from the invention of writing systems to the seventeenth century. The aim of the class is to engage students in historical interpretation as well as to provide them with a narrative account of the development of civilizations. By the end of the semester, students should be able to understand the fundamentals of historical analysis and be competent to evaluate the evidence of the past. There are a number of components to the class to help accomplish these goals.
1. A textbook, Western Civilizations, by Judith Coffin, Robert Stacey, Carol Syme, et al. This provides the coverage and consequently the greater context for historical interpretation. Students will demonstrate comprehension of this material in two exams: a midterm and a final.
2. Lectures. Lectures will cover certain aspects of the material covered broadly in the textbook; many will be devoted to showing how evidence is interpreted.
3. Occasional readings in primary sources. Primary sources are the evidence of the past. They are the documents and objects created by civilizations that are our clues to how those civilizations thought and acted. Secondary sources are interpretations of this evidence.
The midterm and final will be based equally on the textbook, lectures, and occasional readings.
4. Responses to the primary sources. Students will write one-page responses to each primary source reading, addressing a question that will provide the starting point of a class discussion. These responses ask students to analyze evidence and reach conclusions about what the evidence tells us.
5. Analysis of a primary source. Here students employ their skills to describe the origins and meanings of a primary source from the past.
The reason for the goals of this course are several. First, understanding the present often requires an understanding of the past, since human societies often explain themselves by referring to their histories. Second, this understanding is not singular or always ascertainable. It is important for students to recognize the level of interpretation that goes into all historical reconstructions. Third, the skill of analyzing evidence is one that can be shaped and developed, and is a transferable skill—useful in all acts of judgement. Fourth, the ability to explain these judgements, and to question the judgements of others, is fundamental to almost all rational activity, and keeps the mind from lethargy.
